Sold November 2011 Back to Archive

The mighty Kirton Locomotive Works ground to a halt recently, when Eric ran out of space to build his next project - Sam and I went up on an emergency mission this morning to make some room for the poor man, bringing home another three of his creations (whilst also enjoying a drive around his railway in the sunshine).

Regular readers will remember the quirky engines that have appeared on these pages in the past, the work of a prolific engineer who spends most of his waking hours conceiving, building and playing with all sorts of engines on his garden railway. Having started with a Romulus, he quickly progressed to a Tinkerbell (now resplendent in red livery, doing regular service down in the West Country and having, in the recent past, even pulled an HRH), before knocking out a single Fairlie version of the design, as well as a Garratt - we've had them all here, several have been over to my club to amuse the natives. For those who haven't seen these before, I did a write up of my visit to the railway back in 2004.

This is KLR No.8 - his take on a Tinkerbell but with Walschaert's gear. It's got a welded steel marine type boiler with expanded tubes, working pressure 100psi, feed is by injector and axle pump. Cast iron cylinder have slide valves, there are a pair of displacement lubricators fitted.

Sam, at 6' 4", was dubious about getting in it, but once installed declared it comfortable, with headroom to spare.

As with all the KLR engines, they steam and run - fine tuning of the twiddly bits, from paintwork to plumbing, allows ample scope for individual expression...

Length 67 inches
Width 24 inches
Height 51 inches